Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes (30 page)

Trevor hunched his shoulders and sat forward with his forearms resting on the table. He reached across the table and tried to take both her hands but she slid them into her lap. “Look at me, Eadie,” he said. She looked at him. “I have never in my entire life slept with prostitutes. The old Judge started the tradition of bringing women along years ago and I just went along with it because it was tradition and it seemed to give Broadwell and Zibolsky so much fucking joy. But I never, ever slept with those women myself. And Ramsbottom and Bentley will back me up on that if you call them.”

The minute he said it, she knew it was true. She had known all along, she supposed, but it had been easier to hate him for sleeping with prostitutes than it had been to admit she was loosing him to Tonya. It had been easier to write him off as a bastard than to admit her relationship with Trevor was like her mother’s relationships with Luther Birdsong and Frank Plumlee.

“Tonya was a mistake. I don’t even know why Tonya happened, really. She was a distraction, a way to make me feel better about myself.” He shook his head and looked at the cup of Kudzu Koolaid that rested on the table between his hands. “I’m not making excuses. I’m just telling you everything’s going to be different from now on. Even if you don’t take me back, I’m still quitting my law practice. I’m going to write. I’m forty-five years old and if I don’t try now, I’ll never have the courage to try. I don’t know how I’ll live. I don’t know how
we’ll
live. There won’t be any money. We’ll have to sell the house.”

“I didn’t sell everything,” Eadie said. “I want you to know that. I kept some of the antiques and the portrait of your mother.”

“I don’t care about any of that shit.” He shrugged and lifted his paper cup. “Well, maybe the portrait of my mother.” He grimaced and set his drink down. “I want you to know, the only women I’ve slept with outside of our marriage are Rosemary Crouch, that waitress out at the Thirsty Dog, and Tonya.”

“That doesn’t exactly make you a hero, you asshole.”

He chuckled and sat back in his chair with his hands resting on his thighs. “No, it doesn’t. But it makes me honest.” He didn’t want to get her angry. If she got angry she’d start throwing things, and then he’d never get her to take him back.

Eadie took her hands out of her lap. She played with the edge of the camo tablecloth. “Honesty isn’t enough anymore,” she said.

He frowned and looked at his hands. “And the only men you’ve ever slept with are Bobby Summerfield, that cowboy out at the Thirsty Dog, and that sonofabitch personal trainer?”

“Denton.”

A muscle moved in his jaw. He took his hands out of his lap and laid them on the table. “Yeah, Denton,” he said.

The Swamp Dogs were playing “Damaged Goods.” “Listen,” Eadie said. “They’re playing our song.”

“I don’t expect you to take me back, I know it’s probably too late for that, but I want you to know I love you. You’re the only woman I’ve ever really loved and if you take me back I’ll spend the rest of my life proving that.”

“I’ve gotten used to the idea of not having you in my life, Trevor. I’ve gotten used to the idea of being alone. I found a gallery in Atlanta that’s going to sell my goddesses. I’ve been working pretty steadily the last few weeks.”

“Eadie, that’s great. I mean it.” He reached for her hand again and this time she let him take it.

“I don’t want to go back to that old life,” she said. “I don’t want to go back to all the chaos and the distractions.”

“Just give me another chance.”

“I’m not putting up with infidelity anymore,” Eadie said. “I’m tired of that shit.”

“I’m through with all that,” Trevor said. “I know what I need to make me happy, and it isn’t another woman.”

Wendell Stamps and his beautiful wife, Amalie, danced past the table wrapped in each other’s arms. Eadie thought about love and forgiveness, and how, if you were lucky, you could live with someone most of your life and still get to find out something new about them every day. And she thought about herself and Trevor, and Nita and Jimmy Lee Motes, and Lavonne and Mona Shapiro and Little Moses, and how everyone’s definition of happiness was different, and you had to work it out for yourself and not let other people tell you what was right. “I’ll have to think about it for a while,” she said, trying to prolong the feeling of independence, trying to buy herself time. “I’m not making any quick decisions.”

“I don’t expect you to.” He leaned forward and tried to kiss her.

She turned her face away but let him keep her hand. “I can live without you if I have to,” she said.

“It kills me to hear you say that.”

“Just so you know,” she said.

B
Y TEN O’CLOCK
most of the debutantes and their escorts were liquored up enough for the presentation ceremony to begin. Wendell Stamps strolled across the stage and took possession of the microphone. The Swamp Dogs took a beer break. The crowd hooted and screamed and Wendell put his hands up to settle them down. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Wendell said. “Kudzu Debutantes and Redneck Escorts.” This brought some shouts from the crowd. “What, you might ask, qualifies someone for membership in our fine debutante society? Well, to put it bluntly, there are a number of stringent qualifications. First, she must
look
like a female.” This comment brought several whistles from the gay community, who over the years had begun to attend the debutante ball in ever-increasing numbers, driving in from Mobile and Birmingham and Atlanta.

“She can be married.”

“Yeah boy,” someone shouted.

Wendell raised his hands. “She can be single or single for the evening!”

“Hallelujah!”

Wendell lifted one finger and held it over his head like Moses parting the Red Sea. “Hell, she can even be widowed.”

“You tell us, brother!”

Wendell was into it now, walking back and forth across the stage and doing his best impersonation of a televangelist. “She can be longtime divorced, newly divorced, or soon-to-be divorced.” This brought the loudest applause and stamping of feet. “She can be a divorcee in any sense of the word, or, as we say in the South, she can be drinking double, but sleeping single.”

The crowd went wild. Wendell mopped his face and waited for the noise to subside. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, opening his arms wide, “I give you the fifth annual Kudzu Debutantes. Ladies, come up to the stage, give your names and the names of your escorts to the name caller, and line up for your promenade. If you think you might have trouble with the promenade, raise your hands for assistance.” This brought a roar of laughter from the audience. Several people raised their hands.

The Swamp Dogs straggled back onto the stage while the debutante line formed. There were about twenty debs being presented this year. Lavonne stood at the end of the line with Little Moses behind Eadie and Trevor, and Nita and Jimmy Lee, who had shown up around ten o’clock. Nita was barefoot and she was blushing like a bride. Lavonne had never seen her look so pretty or so happy. Lavonne was halfway through her third Koolaid when she realized she couldn’t feel her hands and there was a sound of jungle drums in her head and she was happy, happy, happy. She wasn’t nervous at all. If she had to give a speech, she’d be fine. If she had to, she could give the Gettysburg Address. She could recite the damn preamble to the Constitution and never skip a beat.

Vernon Caslin, who in the real world was an auctioneer for the Mertis Slack Real Estate Company, went to the microphone with his list of debutantes and their escorts. The Swamp Dogs began playing “Pomp and Circumstance” with a slight backbeat. Vernon held up his hands.

“Simmer down, simmer down,” he said. “Let’s get this show on the road. Okay, first up we got Miss Flossy Bedweder and her date Mr. Dewayne deBoner.” Wild applause followed. “Next, is Miss Ivana daMoan and her date Gnarly Davisson.” More applause. “Miss Mozelle McCrotch and Homer Damnright. Miss Ophelia Sticks and Bocephus Abcess.”

The list went on and on, with the applause and cheers remaining pretty constant up until the moment Wanda Mosby was presented. Wanda had been a cheerleader in high school. She hadn’t cheered in thirty years but under the influence of Kudzu Koolaid and the heady encouragement of the crowd, Wanda bounced across the stage, did a cartwheel, and went into the splits right in front of the microphone. She got a standing ovation that lasted for several minutes and it wasn’t until the cheering had begun to die down and Wanda still sat there with her legs apart and a funny look on her face that the crowd realized she was stuck. Her escort hurried over to help but it took him, Vernon, and one of the members of the Swamp Dogs to get Wanda on her feet. She grinned and gave the crowd a victory sign as she limped off the stage on the arm of her escort.

Lavonne watched it all like a dreamer watches a dream, kind of half in and half out of consciousness. The loss of feeling in her hands had spread through her limbs and was slowly moving into her head. The shotgun-shell minilights glittered like diamonds in the top of the circus tent. The voices of the crowd were dampened, like distant music. All around her was a sea of happy faces and Lavonne realized she was one of them, that whatever had come before was over with and whatever came from now on would be of her own making. She thought of her parents, of her mother’s acquiescent suffering and her father’s selfishness, and she forgave them both. She thought of her daughters and the guilt she would feel upon telling them she had left their father, and she let that go, too. She thought of the sacrifices she had made to bring her here, to this one moment in time, and she did not regret a single one and would make them all again if she had to. And she thought, briefly, of Leonard, of the hopeful boy he had been before time and circumstance and character wreaked their gradual disintegration, and she forgave him, too. But mostly she thought of herself, of the girl she had once been, of the woman she was now, and of the woman she would one day become, and it seemed to Lavonne that everything had a purpose, every trauma and heartache and joy, and she was living proof of all that.

“And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for,” Vernon said, and Lavonne saw the faces of the crowd turn her way and this was the moment she had been waiting for all her life. Nita stood at the side of the stage and smiled and beckoned for her to come on. Eadie grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. The Swamp Dogs launched into a rousing rendition of “Liquored Up and Lacquered Down,” and Lavonne Zibolsky, aka Miss Ima Badass, went forward to claim her crown.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to Lee Boudreaux, whose guidance and belief in my work helped forge this novel, to Linda Marrow, Dan Mallory, Bert Yaeger, and all the other editors at Ballantine/Random House whose patience, advice, and good humor were unfailing.

I would like to thank Kristin Lindstrom and Joel Gotler, whose early appreciation of my story kept me writing, and whose hard work made this whole experience possible.

Thanks to all those fine teachers and professors who taught me how to read and appreciate good literature, who encouraged me, and saw something in me that probably made most people nervous.

To Sam, Lauren, and Jordan, who put up with burned biscuits, unmade beds, missed P.T.A. meetings, and all the other baggage that goes along with having a mother who is a writer, and to Mark, whose honesty, encouragement, and love have sustained me for nearly thirty years.

And finally, thanks to my parents, who taught me to appreciate the magic of the written word and to believe that being a little different is a good thing.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

C
ATHY
H
OLTON
was born in Lakeland, Florida. The daughter of a university professor, she grew up in college towns in the South and Midwest. She attended Oklahoma State University, Michigan State University, and worked for a number of years in Atlanta before settling in the mountains of Tennessee with her husband and three children.
Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes
is her first novel.

Revenge of the Kudzu Debutantes
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Cathy Holton

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Holton, Cathy.

Revenge of the kudzu debutantes : a novel / Cathy Holton.

p. cm.

1. Women—Southern States—Fiction.                           2. Man-woman relationship—Fiction.                           3. Southern States—Fiction.                           4. Revenge—Fiction.                           I. Title

PS3608.O494434R488 2006

813′.6—dc22

2005048275

www.ballantinebooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-49370-5

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